How to Watch OWN Without Cable — Your Top 5 Options

The Oprah Winfrey Network is your source for popular shows like The Haves and the Have Nots. But can you keep watching OWN after canceling your cable subscription? This guide will help you learn how to watch OWN without cable.

Oprah Winfrey Network

Founded seven years ago by Oprah Winfrey, OWN is a variety network that produces original content featuring African American talent. Dramatic series like the long-running hit The Haves and the Have Nots air alongside home makeover show Home Made Simple with Laila Ali.

Oprah sold a controlling interest in OWN last year to Discovery Communications, home of Discovery Channel and HGTV. Oprah remains the network’s chief executive officer and regularly hosts her interview series Oprah’s Master Class. The interview special Oprah at the Apollo premiered this week.

Streaming TV Services

Cord-cutting became a lot easier a few years ago when live TV streaming services began offering a cable-like TV experience over the internet. You get many of the same channels you’d find on a cable service. Instead of renting a cable box, however, all you have to do is download apps to your favorite devices.

Most of the services offer advanced features like cloud recording or streaming to many devices at the same time. Most importantly, the streaming services charge as little as $16 per month. Even the most expensive subscriptions cost less than half what you’d pay a cable company.

The following services all carry OWN, either standard with a base subscription or as part of a step-up subscription plan. The streaming services that don’t carry OWN are fubo TV, Hulu with Live TV and Sling TV.

AT&T launched DirecTV Now in 2016 and quickly turned it into the second largest streaming TV service in the country. One reason for DirecTV Now’s success is its large channel lineup. DirecTV Now offers more channels than any other streaming service. With the right plan, you can get more than 120 channels.

Subscribing to DirecTV Now is straightforward. Just pick the plan with the right combination of channels for your budget. There is one catch, however: OWN is not part of DirecTV Now’s entry-level “Live a Little” plan. You’ll have to pay at least $50 per month for the “Just Right” plan to get OWN.

DirecTV Now frequently offers incentives to get you to subscribe. As long as you pay the first few months up front, you can get a free streaming device like Amazon’s Fire TV or the Apple TV 4K.

Since AT&T owns DirecTV Now, it offers an excellent deal to its wireless subscribers. As long as you have one of AT&T’s Unlimited wireless plans, the company will reduce each month’s DirecTV Now bill by $15.

Fifty-three networks treat DirecTV Now as a TV provider. That’s more than any other streaming TV service except for PlayStation Vue. Unfortunately, OWN isn’t one of those supported networks.

DirecTV Now features

DirecTV Now has somewhat weak features. Unlike its competitors, DirecTV Now does not have a cloud DVR. Instead, it offers a 72-hour Rewind feature that lets you watch shows up to three days after they air. That won’t help if you’re on vacation and even then, fewer than half of the channels DirecTV Now carries support 72-hour Rewind.

AT&T will overhaul DirecTV Now’s features this year. Within a few months, all subscribers will get access to a cloud DVR. Although the recording features aren’t finished yet, the system being beta tested right now allows you to record up to one hundred hours of content.

Despite the shared branding, PlayStation Vue does not require Sony’s PlayStation gaming console. The electronics giant launched PlayStation Vue three years ago. A slow rollout now has the third-place TV streaming service playing catch-up to market leaders Sling TV and DirecTV Now.

The reason for PlayStation Vue’s poor showing must lie in confusion over the brand name because the service itself has a lot to offer. If you choose to subscribe to PlayStation Vue, you will find a rich, family-friendly feature set. With large, seventy-channel lineup, PlayStation Vue offers more channels than any streaming service other than DirecTV Now.

OWN is part of PlayStation Vue’s entry-level Access plan so you can get started at a reasonable price. The subscription plans offer progressively more channels as you move up in price, letting you match your channel needs with your budget.

Access: 45 channels for $40 per month.

Core: 60 channels for $45 per month.

Elite: 84 channels for $55 per month.

Ultra: 87 channels, including HBO and Showtime, for $75 per month.

PlayStation Vue has also done a better job than DirecTV Now in getting networks to accept its subscribers’ login credentials. Sixty-seven networks, including OWN, will let PlayStation Vue subscribers watch all of their premium content.

PlayStation Vue features

PlayStation Vue subscriptions come with a host of features. The cloud DVR lets you record as many shows as you want, but only for twenty-eight days. Older recordings get automatically deleted after the fourth week.

The Catch Up feature works just like DirecTV Now’s 72-hour Rewind. You can watch programs for up to three days after they air. Networks don’t seem to like this feature. Catch Up only works with certain channels and certain shows.

PlayStation Vue apps

PlayStation Vue also has a very family-friendly policy when it comes to simultaneous streaming. You and your family can stream to up to five devices at a time. Those devices could be any of a wide range of streaming platforms:

Not all of the PlayStation Vue apps are created equal. Some features are only available on certain platforms. Owners of the PlayStation 4 game console can use the Multi-view feature to watch three video streams at a time.

Live sports scores appear in the PlayStation Vue apps for PlayStation, Amazon Fire TV and the official Android TV platform.

The PlayStation Vue apps for Android TV, Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV have league pages that consolidate current and upcoming games for many national sports leagues.

Set profiles for everyone in the house so you don’t get recommendations based on your kids’ favorites. Source: YouTube TV

YouTube TV hit the market almost a year ago. Unlike most of its competitors, YouTube chose to roll its streaming TV service one market at a time. YouTube TV is still only available in one hundred markets, although that covers more than 85% of all Americans.

That slow rollout gave YouTube time to negotiate streaming deals with most of the local ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliate stations in each market. The fragmented nature of the TV business makes negotiating these deals difficult for streaming services. YouTube TV’s take-it-slow approach has given it better local station coverage than any other streaming TV service. If getting your local stations is a priority, then be sure to check if YouTube is available where you live.

YouTube TV only offers one subscription plan which gives you more than fifty channels, including OWN. That plan originally cost $35 per month, but YouTube TV will raise its prices to $40 per month by mid-March.

YouTube TV features

Besides live and on-demand TV, you’ll also get one of the best cloud DVRs offered by a streaming TV service. YouTube TV lets you record as many programs as you want and keep them for up to nine months.

Families will appreciate YouTube TV’s profile system. Each account holder can create as many as six profiles. That gives each family member their own cloud DVR, favorites, recommendations and viewing history.

YouTube TV apps

As a new service, YouTube TV hasn’t developed a strong lineup of apps yet. That’s probably just as well since YouTube TV only lets you stream to three devices at a time.

The newest streaming TV service is Philo which launched last November. “New” is relative. Philo has actually been around for years providing streaming services to the campus cable operations at many universities.

Philo’s entry into the national TV streaming business made a big splash. People paid attention when Philo offered the lowest subscription prices in the industry.

A Philo subscription only costs $16 per month. That gives you thirty-seven channels, including OWN. A slightly more expensive forty-six channel subscription will still only cost you $20 per month.

The way Philo can afford to offer such low prices is by not offering the most expensive channels. None of the 24-hour news networks, sports networks, national networks or local stations come with a Philo subscription.

Philo features

Philo focuses instead on lifestyle and entertainment channels. Popular networks like BET, Food Network, HGTV and Lifestyle are all part of the entry-level Philo subscription. The step-up plan adds channels like BET-Her, Cooking Channel and nickToons.

You can stream content free of charge from the OWN website or the Watch OWN apps. Available content includes on-demand streams of recent episodes and a deep back catalog of OWN original programming. You can also use the apps to watch the OWN broadcast live.

Living room devices: Apple TV and Roku.

Smart TVs and Blu-ray players: None

Mobile devices and tablets: Android and iOS.

Game consoles: None.

Desktop browsers: Chrome and Safari.

There is a catch, though. Like other cable networks, OWN only makes a handful of on-demand episodes available to everyone. In order to watch the rest of OWN’s on-demand content or the network’s live stream, you must log in with a TV provider.

Currently, the only internet TV service that unlocks OWN is PlayStation Vue.

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